‘No better time to enter journalism than now’

2 May 2009

Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta (in picture, left) has said there couldn’t be a more exciting time to enter journalism than the present one.

Delivering the convocation address to the Class of 2009 at the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media in Bangalore on Saturday, he predicted that the present crisis in the media would lead to the second “Golden Age”.

Recalling that the Emergency had been called the worst time for young journalists, he said that there was a journalism boom immediately after the Emergency.

That, he said was the “Golden Age” of the Indian media.

The current crisis, he said, would wipe out the large amounts of space that we have for the average, the mediocre and the below-mediocre. Competence levels will go up, he said, adding that journalism has as many incompetent people and scamsters as has any other profession.

All talk of the demise of print journalism as we know it today is all noise, Gupta said, adding that the newsroom was going to be redefined with the introduction of competent, digitally-savvy journalists.

Exhorting young journalists to be curious, he rated curiosity as the essential quality for a journalist. He also asked young journalists to be more opinionated in the news room, than in their stories, to see everything as a story, and to uncover what those in power don’t want to cover.

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Photograph: Shekhar Gupta proceeds to deliver the convocation at IIJN. To his left is IIJNM vice dean Prof Kanchan Kaur (Karnataka Photo News)

One Response to “‘No better time to enter journalism than now’”

encouraging words from the Master. Infact it is a reality that journalism is based on RoI. All the talk of journalism as a mission is lost. Today we compromise. Practical Journalism as in other profession. But it is neither justified nor desirable. Journalists have to stand-out. Imortant is now’ Constructive Journalism’